


Evidence Suggests

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Author's Recommendations [35]
Category: Cable and Deadpool
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, M/M, Masturbation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Praise Kink, Sex Tapes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2020-12-17 11:08:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21053396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: When a recording of Wade and Nate sleeping together surfaces after their 'divorce', Wade struggles to maintain appropriate levels of anger toward his manipulative, selfish bastard of an ex. He wants to insist they never had anything meaningful, even with recorded proof to the contrary.





	1. Smile for the Camera

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for a prompt on the Cablepool Kink Meme. Anon wanted a leaked sex-tape of Nate and Wade, captured from a hidden camera, so neither of them knew it existed until it was released and the world goes nuts over it. This is my best take on that, and it's slow going but I do have an outline for the whole fic, which should be about three chapters long.

Snippets of it run on all manner of news broadcasts and talk shows. It’s a trending topic, something it seems like _ everyone _ has an opinion on, even though the full unedited video is supposed to be impossible to find.

Wade’s got people to track down impossible to find videos. Well, he has a person. Weasel, he’s got Weasel -- who delivered! He wasn’t happy about it, but Wade figures his curiosity being sated trumps whatever trauma his minion suffered. It wasn’t like it was a snuff film -- he thinks The View would have had a few rather more squawky things to say if it was a snuff thing.

And he’s right. 

It’s not a great angle for porn, but if you’re going to lean into that creeper, hidden camera vibe, this was probably the ideal. Good, solid view of Nate’s big, soft bed, camera placed just about perfect to let the viewer feel like they’re right in the room watching the show. Whoever planted the camera knew what they were doing.

Really good show, too. Wade could probably still get off on this even if Nate was a proven dickhead who wasn’t worth his time -- a cutting insult from a merc who could barely get work.

The clips they play on the TV focus mostly on about five minutes of post-coital chitchat, but there's one still closeup everyone uses as the thumbnail for their segment on the scandal; Nate's boxy head angled back, eyes shut and mouth open to moan. That's from about fifteen minutes into the forty-five minute run time of the ‘full clip’, which is in and of itself a cut from what Wade has to assume is a monumentally boring CVR reel of Nathan’s room. It would have to be boring, because Nate didn’t hardly spend time in there, and when he did he was mostly sleeping or meditating, and even his masturbation was obnoxiously normal when Wade wasn’t around to get him to embrace his inner freak.

Wade doesn’t know why he keeps the file. It’s not very good blackmail material, given that pretty much the whole world knows about it now. It’s not even that kinky, given the shit they’ve gotten into other times. 

It _ is _ the only concrete photographic evidence of the relationship… or whatever the hell you call it when you think you’re best buddies and also boning. Regularly, inventively, and occasionally with a sense of urgency or meaning Wade could never quite pin down. There was a lot of fucking happening there for little while, but that’s not really _ important_, Wade loves sex, Nathan loves and is good at sex, having a lot of it together made sense once they were sort of on the same team for a minute. 

So Wade doesn’t really need a souvenir, and he’s not looking for one.

Maybe it’s just that it’s hot. Wade could take or leave porn with him in it the way he looks now, but Nate? The man’s an asshole, but he’s dreamy, all rock hard muscle and gleaming metal, perfectly in control. He fucks like he knows he's being watched, gorgeous and confident. 

Honestly, Wade figures the scandal of the tape going viral -- of the tape existing at all -- isn't so much the great saviour and eminent messiah, Nathan Cable Billion Middle Names Summers being caught in bed with a man. It's not like Nathan's shy about telling anyone who'll listen about how the future is a different place, where public nudity is fine and sexuality and gender stereotypes are either completely eradicated or at least unrecognizable. 

The oh so enlightened future doesn't discriminate and neither does Nate, which Wade found endlessly hilarious in a 'how many ways can I test that assertion before he snaps' sort of way. 

But no, it's not Nate being in bed with a man, and it's not him having an active, rigorous sex life. Tabloid rags were constantly speculating on Nate's sexual prowess and who may or may not have been in his bed, and they implied plenty of times that they suspected so-and-so might be a boyfriend almost as often as they implied someone else was a girlfriend. 

There had been a time when reading those articles had been a thing to giggle at. Fuckers with nothing to do but lounge around speculating about someone else's sex life, trying to insult without the balls to actually throw an insult, or show support without losing a certain demographic by actually showing support -- it was a dumb sort of politics that was a good sort of joke, especially when Wade had been on the inside of the angle speculated upon and could say with certainty that the folks writing up those magazine articles didn't have a fucking clue what they were talking about. 

Anyway, after all this time, people were used to Cable being too progressive to be mingling with so many politicians, and Wade thinks there might have been some muttering if the hidden camera had caught Nate fucking someone like Kriek or maybe even someone famous and tie-in worthy like Logan, but it hadn't. And if Wade had one of those fancy inducers that held the image regardless of how vigorously the wearer exerted themselves, or if he simply didn't look as fucked up as he does, maybe the muttering would have been less too. 

But it's the shock of pretty-boy muscle-head 'could have anyone he wanted in his bed anytime' Nathan caught in very eager, mutually consensual, seemingly happy and lighthearted sex with the absolute insane mess of Wade Wilson that made it something everyone and their fucking mom had an opinion on.

Hell, the first time Wade watches the tape, he kind of gets it too. He's not super thrilled to see his ugly skin on full display -- and it's on _ full _display, no modesty-protecting, artistically placed sheets to censor anything -- or the stupid fucking faces he makes when Nathan's fucking him just right. If he could go back in time and give himself a bag for his head, he'd call it a kindness to Nate in the moment and everyone else, including himself, in the future. 

But the thing is, even as he's registering how super gross it all really does look, he can't quite help the fact that his dick is very interested in the sensory memories -- and possibly emotional memories -- he's waking up by watching. 

On the screen, it's just a lot of sexy moans, groans, dirty talk and wet slapping skin over the horror show of Wade getting his brains fucked out, Nathan holding him down and open and railing him like he can find the meaning of life itself in Wade's ass if he just fucks him hard enough.

Alright, that's a tortuous simile but honestly, Nathan's face is so focused and so intent on Wade, like it doesn't matter that Wade looks like human bubblegum. That had always been part of what made it so good, made Wade keep coming back -- Nate made it fun, Nate made it feel so good. Nate wasn't fucking him for money or on a dare, and he was never 'looking past' any part of Wade. He said crazy bullshit about liking the scars and the way the tumors and lesions and all the nasty rest of it shifted around in a continuous cycle of damage and healing itself. He looked at Wade and touched him not like it didn't _ matter _ that Wade was so fucked up, but like it mattered in a _ good _way. 

Wade had made a ton of concessions and stupid compromises, with himself and with Nathan, to keep coming back, back then. He'd wanted to keep falling in bed with Nate, even if he always said it was a one-time deal. They didn't talk about sissy stuff like feelings, there were no late-night confessions or mid-coitus proclamations. No one bought anyone else flowers, and Nate very rarely had time to eat with Wade, much less go on a date. They weren't in love; neither of them had time for that kind of shit.

Neither of them, Wade's sure, _ wanted _ that kind of shit.

But _ sex _ , well, almost everyone liked sex. Wade _ definitely _liked sex, as frequently and as energetically as he could get it. 

And watching this tape puts him back in a place, a time, where sex with Nate wasn't just a day-dream wish but an active option. Nate was always willing to do the full bedroom athletics routine, test the limits of Wade's bendy body and sometimes even his healing factor to give it hard and fast when they were both looking to blow off steam. 

He starts the video clip back to the beginning and hits play. Home alone in a dark apartment with just the light from his own laptop screen, he's not wearing headphones, but as a courtesy to his neighbours, he's got the volume at a reasonable level as he watches a younger, stupider version of himself flop dramatically on Nathan's over-sized bed. Watching, there's just this weird, pulled back, creeper hidden-camera angle to catch them, so for the first five minutes or so Wade's solo, gesticulating as he talks to Nathan, lurking off screen.

Other viewers might wonder what Nate's up to. Wade remembers because he thought these political arcs were so fucking boring; Nathan had been cooped up in his office all day talking to ambassadors and managing his island paradise and then when Wade had managed to pry him out at dusk, he'd come back to his apartment and sat down at his little desk _ there _and started typing up some email that needed to be sent, leaving Wade to mock him from the bed.

The microphone attached to the hidden cam feed is surprisingly good, given that the whole set up had managed to escape Nathan's very healthy paranoia and the regular random security sweeps he encouraged his security chief to perform. A very sophisticated set up, probably a disappointing waste of investment dollars in this case, since the only thing of remote interest the fancy rig had managed to catch was _ one _fairly tame hookup. 

On the tape, Wade flops back onto the bed and says to the ceiling, "Need I remind you the very important lesson imparted to us by the wise and prolific Mr. Stephen King, that all work and no play turns Jack into a dull, murderous boy?"

"Isolation, unchecked aggression, and alcoholism made Jack Torrance try to kill his family," Nate says dryly. You can hear his chair complain as he moves, but he still doesn't make an appearance on screen, still focused on his work, frustrating then and now. In real-life, Wade's lips move unconsciously along as Nate finishes, "He was far from overworked."

Recorded-Wade and real-time Wade both sigh at that. 

"Here I thought it was the ghosts that whole time," Wade says, fidgeting on the bed. There's no reply from Nathan and watching the tape, Wade can remember hearing the scratch of a pen against paper, the rise of annoyance among a host of far more complicated emotions surrounding Nate's insistence on working eighteen hours of any given day, short-changing himself on sleep and rarely giving himself a minute for leisure. 

You can't pick any of that up on the recording, Wade doesn't think, but you can maybe pick up the moment, after a beat of silence, where Wade decides to get up to mischief. He's wearing his Deadpool getup, which makes getting into his own pants a little more difficult, definitely more artless, than it would have been if he'd been dressed in civvies, but if Wade recalled properly, he'd been dressed in anticipation of a job that had fallen through before deciding to go force break-time on Nate. 

The bed is a sturdy thing and the mattress is quiet enough for Wade's struggle with his clothes to be unremarkable. Years later, watching the tape, Wade can still feel the same curl of mingled excitement and annoyance that the sound doesn't warrant any attention from Nate, letting him get most of the way undressed and sprawled out on the bed in a mockery of an alluring pose without any interruption. On the tape, his cock is hard as he arches his back and leans into the pillows; present time, he's getting there, hands falling away from the laptop as he leans back on the couch to watch.

On the video, he spits loudly into his hand, and he can remember the thrill of Nate going suddenly still, the scratch of the pen stopping, the stretch of silence as Wade gets his hand on his cock and starts jacking himself slow and firm. The scars and tumors on his hand always catch on the lumps and bumps of his cock, even with something slick to help out, but he'd learned quickly to find that enjoyable, and that is obvious enough in the way he groans, louder than necessary on the video, as he thrusts up into his own hand. 

Off screen, a chair creaks. Nate's still not visible, but you can hear the catch of his breath as he's getting to his feet, and Wade doesn't need to see a recording to remember the look on his face, stunned and horny, at the sight Wade made all laid out like that. 

"Oh, no, don't let me interrupt work-time," Wade says from the bed, way too casual for a man who's dick is all angry red like that and leaking in his fist. "You're busy. I got this."

Two things happen simultaneously on the tape; Wade is suddenly dragged unceremoniously toward the end of the bed, and Nathan steps into view at last, palming himself through his trousers, eyes on Wade. The room's well-lit enough for the hunger on his face to show, and Wade feels a thrill, just watching, at that look on the big mutant's face. 

"Dirty cheat," Wade says as he sits up, hands knocking Nate's away so he can get the fly open. Wade remembers this, remembers a dozen times similar, remembers that particular day how the wet on his left hand had been enough to darken Nate's nice trousers and how Nate hadn't cared, standing there eager as Wade got his pants open and pulled out his dick, fattened a little but not really hard yet, and fit his mouth around the head before he even finished tugging Nate's pants around his hips. 

Nate's hands were gentle on him, he remembers. Nate was always gentle at the start, pretending to be the benign dictator of his little Socialist Utopia, so up his own ass about being a good guy. Wade liked breaking him, every time, out of the gentle schtick, getting him angry or so worked-up horny he forgot about appearances. 

But there's a thrill, too, there always was but it hits Wade especially strong watching the tape alone in his dark, stinking apartment, at how Nate bothered to be gentle with him, even though he had to know Wade didn't need it. 

The camera has them in profile, which isn't the most exciting angle, but it certainly works to show how Nate's cock swells with each bob of Wade's head, how it gets long and hard in less than a minute, the flushed pink of it glimpsed for a few seconds before Wade swallowed him again. Wade pauses the video, licking his lips, taking in the image of Nate cradling the back of his head while Wade's throat is visibly stuffed with cock. 

It's an ugly picture, too much of Wade's skin on display to be anything but, but it's also glorious, and when Wade hits play again, he's treated to the sound of Nate cursing, that quaint old-timey sounding thing he'd say when Wade did something that really turned the trick for him.

"Oath," he groans, and his knuckles go white as he holds Wade there and shoves himself forward, mashing Wade's nose into his pubic hair and humping his face. "Your mouth, ah, perfect, Wade, so good."

He sounds so fucking stupid, and Wade's hands are tight on his own thighs in the present, gripping the firmness of Nate's hips on the tape. He's so obviously enjoying himself in the video, held still with his mouth kept soft for Nate to fuck. It's just a blowjob, not even a well-filmed one, but Wade could watch this on loop forever and be happy, riding the residual bliss of Nate's careful hands holding him still and the implacable thrust of his hips as he stepped in closer and put Wade right where he needed him. Nate fucks Wade's face like it's the only thing on his mind, like he doesn't have anywhere else to be, like he'd be happy doing this forever.

That had always been part of it, too. Nate's casual dominance, the way he didn't need to be rough to keep control, the way he could, with a look or a word or with the softest touch, steer Wade to doing all kinds of shit. Wade had always been sort of proud of his defiant streak, the way he naturally bucked away from authority. He liked being impossible to control, it was one of the very few things he had going for him, but for a long time back then, Nate had broken him in, just a little. 

Something about feeling good, not just a physical sensation, not just positive feedback through his nerves and the wash of hormones and feel-nice brain chemicals but innately, maybe spiritually. Nate made him feel like a _ good guy_, like he was a good person, or at least was capable of being one. If he did what Nate told him and if he made Nate happy -- if he was _ good _ for Nate, then he'd be good to the rest of the world too. 

Which is bullshit, Wade thinks, scowling as he watches himself whine at Nate pulling away. He wasn't a good guy, and sucking off some megalomaniac mutant super soldier from the war-torn future was sure as hell not going to change that. Nate's 'belief' in him being capable of heroics or change or... or _ whatever _he'd claimed to believe Wade capable of, that was just another way of manipulating him.

And that hurts now, yeah, it always sucks to look back and see how clearly those positive memories are built on bullshit, but it doesn't hurt bad enough to diminish how fucking hot it is to see Nathan utterly focused on him in that moment, caught forever on tape. Nathan on the tape is looming over Wade, holding him down to the bed with TK while Wade gasps and struggles to steady his breathing, and his face is a layered mask of teasing-mean over fondness as he calls Wade a slut while he's tearing his clothes the rest of the way off. His hands on Wade look desperate, rough with desire as he moves Wade around and hitches him up by the knees to get him at the right angle. 

Back then, Wade had been an idiot. Well, he's still an idiot, but he'd been a different kind of idiot, eyes squeezed closed and head tossed away, focusing on physical sensation instead of watching Nate. Sitting back and watching from the outside, dick hard and starting to drip now, Wade remembers why -- too hard to reconcile someone looking at him like that, like he was wanted and needed and perfect and good when every minute of the day outside of this would prove the opposite -- and still hates himself for it. 

Nate almost always insisted on prep; lube and his thick fingers buried in Wade's ass, working him open. Often he decided prep needed to be drawn out, taking his goddamn time until Wade was snarling with the need for the real deal. Hell, when he was feeling especially sadistic, sometimes he'd hold Wade down, bent over his knee or sprawled out on the bed, and finger him until he came, over and over until Wade couldn't even talk, until Wade's dick felt broken, and then sometimes he'd jerk off on Wade, cum on him like the sight of his fucked out body was too god not to, or sometimes he'd finally fuck him, no mercy, rough or gentle, until Wade was sobbing through a final orgasm and he came buried in his ass. 

But sometimes he acted like there wasn't time, like he was as desperate as Wade, doing just enough with the lube to keep from tearing Wade too badly, make sure there were no chaffed dicks involved. Once or twice, out in the middle of a job, meeting by chance or caught off guard by their need for each other, they fucked raw, nothing but spit and blood and precum. 

This is one of those times, and if Wade had kept his eyes open back then he'd have been able to tell. There's a heat in Nate's eyes, a certain starved strain to his expression that Wade has trouble now, in the present, understanding beyond the obvious need to get his dick wet. Nate looks worshipful as his eye flares and the pump bottle of Liquid Silk flies into his hand from the bedside table just out of the shot. He looks worked up, eager as he gets his fingers inside Wade, smiling when Wade arches and yowls. 

_ Smiles _ , not leers, like the sight of Wade losing his goddamn mind under him is something he loves, something he's so fond of he can't help _ but _smile. How much of that is put-on, how much of that is premeditated, an act he's keeping up just in case Wade opens his eyes? How deep does the manipulation go?

Nate doesn't waste time. He could have -- Wade on the screen is obviously out of it, flying high with his malformed cock leaking all over his stomach and willing to do whatever Nate wants him to -- but he only does enough to get Wade wet, fists himself with his slicked up fingers and gets himself ready to go, and then he hikes one of Wade's legs up over his shoulder, holds him spread open wide, and shoves inside. 

Again, Wade pauses the screen. He's breathing a lot heavier now, feels hot and strung-out horny, watching himself get fucked bringing back a whole host of old feelings. He should have brought a dildo out here; fucking himself while watching this might ease the itch it's put deep inside him. Alas, he's out here naked, just him, his hands, and a five-year-old hidden-camera bit of smut reminding him of better-worse days. Looking at the still image of Nate hilting himself with that first thrust, the look of rapturous bliss on both their faces, Wade needs a second. He wants to burn that image into his brain just in case he loses this video somehow and all copies mysteriously disappear.

Back when it had been simple, when it had been the obvious easy choice, to fuck Nathan, to enjoy his company, to trust him. He misses it, he hates that he misses it. 

He pushes play, the moans seeming louder now as they break the silence, a little tinnier than in his memory because his laptop's speakers are shit. Nate fucks him like it's his birthright, he fucks Wade like he owns him. His bare toes dig into the floor for leverage, his normal hand is white-knuckled around one of Wade's ankles, his metal hand curved hard under Wade's other knee, holding him just so. Wade is clutching at the edge of the bed, holding on desperately, trying to find purchase. His cock is an ugly mottled purple, running wet all over his belly, and it visibly twitches on camera when Nathan drags him down the bed for a particularly hard thrust and says, "Touch yourself, Wade,"

On camera and in real time, Wade obeys.

This is not the first time Wade’s watched the video. After he saw the snippet of it played on Oprah, first laughing at the idea of Nate caught in a sex scandal of all things, then realizing with cold shock that Nate wasn’t the only one getting dunked on here, he’d gone online looking for what he could find himself, finding more, longer chunks of the whole tape and all the lovely commentary crusting the clips like flies on shit. It wasn’t just talk shows and gossip rags putting their two cents in, it was goddamn everyone. 

Wade could only take torturing himself with clips kept under a minute and often so heavily blurred as to obscure anything worth mention, which is why he’d made Weasel track the whole thing, as complete of a recording as could be gotten, down on the web and give him the file. With the whole file, he’d sat down and watched it the first time angry. Nate jsut kept finding ways to fuck with him, didn’t he? How the hell had he managed to let this happen? Had he _ let _ anything happen, or was this some long-game maneuver Nathan had set in motion on his own, the motivation for which only coming clear after the fallout settled?

The second time he’d watched it, he’d been too depressed, focusing on dumb detail and trying to figure out if Nate knew there was a camera, or if he didn’t, how much of his enjoyment was a sham. In the end, he’d slammed the laptop shut and curled up on the couch, half smothering himself under a tatty throw-pillow until he passed out.

This is the first time he’s let himself just watch. Let himself just sit here and watch, not to analyze, not to pick it out or turn it around and figure out how this was engineering some kind of benefit for Nate long-term. This was the first time he let himself get off to it, and it feels absolutely absurd to not have done this before. 

Nate was never what anyone would call talkative, in or out of bed. That had always been Wade’s side to hold up, and Wade did, babbling nonstop about things that might have made some kind of sense in the moment but that Wade now had no context for. Nate never told him to shut up, however obnoxious he got, and on screen he’s watching Wade close his eyes and bare his throat, watching him lose the ability to string words together to even manage nonsense, and all the time his face is keenly focused, present in the moment and so goddamn fond. Nate watches Wade on the tape almost as keenly as Wade watches Nate now, years later; he looks at Wade like there’s nothing better in the world he could be seeing, and then Wade groans and grips his cock hard, garbling out a strangled plea that’s not quite English, and Nate _ smiles_.

Focusing, putting in a little effort, Wade can remember the way it felt, all that muscle and metal and deadly psionic potential focused down on him as Nathan lets Wade’s ankle hook over his shoulder so he can lean down and put that big metal hand around Wade’s throat. He doesn’t look mean, he doesn’t look violent -- Wade’s seen him wear both those looks plenty of times, and this certainly isn’t that. 

A number of the comments Wade had tormented himself, unable to stop reading them even when it registered they were always going to be gross, cruel, or both, had talked about this part. Talked about how they would have shut him up a lot sooner, lots of jokes about Nate being deaf or some kind of masochist to have let Wade keep making so much noise for so long.

But the thing is, Wade can remember, if he tries. He can remember the thrill of having all Nate’s attention on him for once, he can remember the burn and strain of his thighs spread so wide, stretched to his limit to accommodate Nate’s massive frame. He can remember the weight of Nate’s palm cupping his throat, the gentle press of those thick fingers over his pulse, the way it could have been a threat but wasn’t. Nate didn’t squeeze or choke or make it hurt at all. Nate wanted to feel it when Wade couldn’t make words anymore, feel the noises in his throat he couldn’t externalize, catch it in the palm of his hand, his and only his.

On the screen, Wade cums a few moments after Nate gets his hand on his throat, whining, toes curled and fingers of the hand not on his dick strangling the sheets at the foot of the bed. He cums so hard he’s painted white all that way to his chest, and in the present, Wade’s gasping and humming as he fucks his own fist in time with Nate pounding his ass on video. Then Nate grins, all teeth, and he says, “Good boy,” all drawn out and sweetly indulgent, and that’s the absolute end for Wade. There’s not a single version of him in any multiverse that wouldn’t cum hearing those words in that tone from that voice. 

He cums wet and messy all over his own hand, jacking himself through it, whining and whimpering at his own sensitivity as he stares, transfixed, at Nathan continuing to fuck him on screen. 

There's never been a sight so gross that made him so eager to get hard again. He feels disappointingly empty as he pets absently at his spent cock, slick, sticky fingers too hot and too textured on the hot flesh. He really ought to have thought ahead and brought a dildo out here for this. Keep one in the couch for exactly this kind of emergency. If the image on the screen were even marginally less glorious, he might pause again just to go grab a nice thick piece and take care of himself, but honestly?

He might have kept his eyes closed a lot when they were fucking for real, all kinds of complicated, embarrassed-by-how-not-embarrassed Nate was emotions happening when he didn't, but he'd seen Nate on the edge of orgasm enough times to remember the look. The way his brow creased, the way his eyes got hazy and tight around the corners, like he's squinting down a long barrel. Someone less in control of themselves might have had to let go of their partner's throat, might have had to slow down or speed up, but Nathan doesn't miss a stroke and he doesn't so much as shift a finger from Wade's neck.

Nate cums buried inside of Wade, fucks him in short, stuttering jerks of his hip as his orgasm hits. Wade's cock drools on his belly, twitches in his hand, and for a moment everyone, past and present, recorded and watching the tape, is equally stupid with it. Cum drunk, brain dead, chasing the tail end of their orgasm with tiny, over-sensitive motions. 

Alone on his couch, breath not quite caught, Wade leans forward impulsively and pauses the video with a tap to his track pad, staring at the image of them tangled up in each other, wet with sweat and blissful from sex, dick drunk and gross and gorgeous with how natural it looks for them. Nathan looks like fucking Greek statuary, solid and larger than life, a god slumming it with mortals, glistening in the light of the room, holding Wade open with one hand and down to the bed with the other, thick metal arm rigid to press against Wade's neck. 

They're both alarming to look at in their own ways, but Nathan's the kind of disfigured strange that people either get heebie-jeebies from but politely pretend not to, or jump straight to fetishizing, forgetting that it's a disease, forgetting that the virus is a threat to Nate's life however it looks, forgetting that it causes him pain.

Wade's the opposite kind of grotesque. He's upsetting, because his skin isn't broken by metal or something organic pretending to be metal. There's nothing fantastic about Wade's disfigurement; Wade's appearance upsets people because he looks like an extreme version of wounds many people have experienced to some degree. A whole body blood blister, a 100% full-thickness burn to the whole dermis, a man-shaped pile of tumor and scab and open lesion. He looks painful and it freaks people out enough that the only way to cope is to treat him as an Other, something too strange and gross to have human emotion, to care about how people look at or talk to him. 

They shouldn't look so good together, but there's something almost artistic to that frozen frame, Wade's long legs spread with Nate wedged in between them, Nathan's classically handsome face staring down in adoration, satisfied and pleased and very clearly into the sight of Wade stretched out beneath him. It should be ridiculous at best, but Wade screencaps the image anyway because, for him at least, it's not ridiculous at all.

Allowing the tape to play again, Nate pulls carefully out of Wade, Wade biting at his lip and writhing against the sheets as Nate staggers to the side and then crumbles to sit on the end of the bed, exhaling loudly. 

This is the part most of the 'news' focuses on. Nathan sweaty and post-orgasm hazy, breathing rough for a moment before collapsing backward onto his bed, making the frame squeak and whine as he jostles Wade and finds a comfortable way to lay. After a moment, Wade moves too, and they both shift in mindless familiarity of one another, finding the best ways to fit together as they relax in the aftermath, neither rushing to get dressed or clean up or put the barest distance between themselves.

Laying there, not exactly spooning but not exactly _ not _ doing that, the level of comfort they find in each other, the ease of being around one another, is so screamingly clear. This is the part _ Wade _ has trouble watching. Fuckos on the internet can bitch all they want about the vomit-inducing sight of Wade’s nasty skin and seeing him in the throes of a messy orgasm, but Wade was used to his own ugly and since he’s still wiping cum off his hand from jerking off to it, he’s clearly found a way to look past it and enjoy a bit of free porn the way god intended. 

Watching Nathan draw him in and kiss his temple and nuzzle under his ear while he’s laughing all low and sleepy, fitting themselves together so easily, like it’s simple, like it’s natural -- watching that is way tougher to see. Nate’s easy affection, himself so completely unguarded, the easy back and forth of sleepy jokes and come-ons, propositions for the near future. At one point near the end of the video, Wade turns his back toward the camera, flipping over so he can drape an arm over Nate’s chest and curl up close, and Nate shifts just enough to make Wade more comfortable, his hand spread over the back of Wade’s head like as to hold him there, good and close. He kisses the Wade’s top of Wade’s head, muttering something so soft Wade’s pretty sure he hadn’t heard it back then. It certainly doesn’t get picked up by the hidden camera. 

The video cuts after that, and no matter how he threatens or bribes Weasel, his minion can’t find any version that extends beyond that. Wade’s not sure what he wants to see. Maybe a hint somewhere, anywhere, of when Nate drops the act. Proof positive that it _ is _ an act. 

Because it would be one thing, right, for him to let Wade be a… a stress-relief sort of thing. A quick and dirty fuck, a sure thing he doesn’t have to worry about maintaining a relationship with, Wade could understand that. He could reconcile Nate using him as that kind of person, justify him keeping Wade around and indulging his bullshit the way he had -- everyone liked having a fuckbuddy, right? A bro who was willing to throw down every now and then, but wasn’t looking for more than the next mutually obtained orgasm. 

That’s how Wade had justified it. That’s what Wade had told himself they had, but watching himself cuddle up on Nate, the easy way he’d put his guard down, it’s hard to lie to himself that there hadn’t been some kind of stupid smooshy idiot feelings involved on his part. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he supposes in the privacy of his own swiss-cheese brain it’s safe to accept that he’d thought -- maybe -- of Nathan as more than just a bro willing to bone on occasion.

But that’s understandable! Wade was, is, and will always be an idiot! Wade can understand himself falling into soft feelings-y bullshit, but Nathan was supposed to be smart enough to be trusted with saving the world. And maybe Wade knew that kind of endeavour was destined to keep blowing up in his face, especially when he kept playing puppet master ‘Time Traveler Knows Best’, but the greater population needed someone like Nate to believe in.

Nate was supposed to be the guy everyone could feel secure about. He was so powerful, all the main players in world politics were scared of him, and all the little people talked behind their hands about the strong, confident mutant. Could he fix the world? Did he have their best interest at heart?

There’s no way for Wade to know about the first question, but he unequivocally knows the answer to the second is a resounding yes. 

So how the fuck is he so stupid that he’s on camera making lovey-dovey eyes at Wade? He has to know how that would tank the larger public opinion of him. He’s supposed to be too fucking smart for any of that shit.

At this point, the video has been in the public consciousness for over a week. Wade's watched the whole long-cut porn thing three times all the way through, more times counting earlier watches when he skipped around on the video, too agitated to let it play straight from beginning to end. 

He's mad about it. He's been mad about it from the get-go, but the anger has had time to sink in and he's chewed it over with plenty of chiming in from the stupid boxes to figure out his initial upset was just a bunch of hopped up machismo bullshit plastered over his real issues. 

The knee-jerk excuse for anger was being on film in the throes of gay sex. He's accepted his own inherent appreciation for sex of all kinds in the privacy of his own head, but he liked to pretend he had an image to protect, and that image included his being as straight as a ruler. Toxic masculinity bullshit, sure; blame the writers or blame the times or blame Wade's shitty upbringing and the way it had been reinforced over and over again that the farther one deviated from attractive, able-bodied, straight, white Christian male, the worse the world would treat you.

He's ugly, chronically in pain and covered in cancerous sores and open wounds, and he super doesn't believe in any variation of Jesus as the son of God. He's not even sure he believes in god at all anymore. That left straight white male, a dangerously low percentage of the requirements to be treated well. 

But honestly, the more he sat around and bickered with himself, the more he had to admit, people hadn't bought the 'straight' act for a long time. There was being a toxic male asshole and there was dramatically overcompensating in the hopes of staying in the closet a little longer, and it was clear enough that the majority of the world saw through the bullshit. 

No, he was mad about the tape, but it wasn't being dragged out of the closet that was really ticking him off. He liked killing homophobes, this would probably make finding them a lot easier. 

For a minute he thinks he's mad because Nathan was dumb enough to let them get filmed, but honestly, that's not it either. No one was perfect, and Wade was _ well aware _ that despite the ability to pretend otherwise, Nate was as flawed as the rest of the world. 

No, what he's mad about is that Nathan let himself get filmed fucking the worst possible person for the public to see him with. It's the kind of scandal that has people all over reassessing their expectations of Mutant Jesus, his morals, his judgement, his _ sanity_. Most of them, after all, still think Wade killed him, even if he'd bounced back. Nate had never seen fit to correct that perception, and now it was being twisted around to make Nate look like an idiot. 

Wade's not super good at brooding. He tries, but he tends to get distracted or hungry or bored of that particular train of thought, and moves on to something more interesting. 

Muddling out his feelings about this fucking tape situation seems to be the exception. He hasn't left his apartment since Weasel got him a copy, about ten hours after a snippet of it was shown on Oprah last week, which was how Wade had found out in the first place. He's obsessing, which he thinks is fair -- the video in public hands changes everything. He's not just some wacky, bizarre merc, he's Nathan Summers's former lover. He'd gotten so many phone calls asking him to make a statement or show up on TV, he was beginning to be afraid of his phone. 

And of course, in the special universal order of such things, he's thinking about that when his phone rings.

"If you don't want to give me money to unalive someone, fuck off," he says by way of greeting, and then freezes like a rabbit in the road at a familiar chuckle, low and relieved and easy. Nathan sounds like he's _ glad _ to hear Wade's voice.

Nate says, "I didn't realize just how much I missed that," like he's got the right to have been thinking about Wade, like he's allowed to just be easy and fond with him still, and Wade's chest gets tight and hot, anger and something else snapping at each other between his ribs. He wants to scream or laugh or kill someone, and Nate just goes on, "By now I'm sure you know why I'm calling. I really think we should speak in person, Wade."

For once in his goddamn life, Wade can't find a damn thing to say. His hand is so tight around the phone that it aches, and his mouth works but he can't get anything to come out, until Nathan pauses and asks, kindly, gently, "Wade, are you there?"

"You can _ especially _ fuck off," Wade hisses then, and slams the phone down. He tears the cord out of the wall and throws the whole thing across the room for good measure.


	2. Speak into the Microphone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate overthinks some stuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Quakey for betaing this chapter.

If Nathan is completely honest with himself, and he tries to be, more often than not, he probably deserved Wade’s explosive rejection of his sudden outreach. Certainly, on some level, he’d expected it. 

He should have tried contacting him sooner. He knew this. 

Knowing does very little to dull the ache that lances through the center of him when Wade snarls at him and immediately hangs up. 

This is always the problem with Nathan’s personal relationships. When it comes to other people, Nathan is good with crowds, scans fantastically as a leader, can make people who want to be his enemy decide to be a friend, or at least consider compromise. He can tame rage and he can inspire bravery and loyalty; he’s really quite good at _ leading_, but one on one, he’s too closed off, too walled up, too busy trying to negotiate the relationship to best individual outcomes for both parties involved to ever really be a good friend. 

He understands this about himself and for a long time he figured it was fine. Not all men are meant to have a great many friends, and it’s easier to be objective without a bunch of other people pushing their personal agendas on him. He has a mission, even if by this point the nature of that mission has grown somewhat -- unwieldy.

Everyone wants something out of any relationship. That’s never clearer to anyone than it is to a telepath, bombarded by the worries and wants of everyone around them until they learn to close their own minds or go mad. Two people interact because they each want something from the other -- power, help, food, sex; consciously or subconsciously, humanity circles itself looking to match desires with fullfillments. 

Nathan learned at a young age to shield his thoughts, to make his mind private, quiet, sheltered and safe. He’s become quite adept at peeking into others’’ minds to find what it is they hope to get out of interacting with him, and how he can employ that to the mutual benefit of all. 

Wade wasn’t wrong when he called him manipulative. He was, and he owned that about himself. It was what he had to do, it was the only way he was ever going to make this world strong enough to avoid becoming the ruin he’d lived in for so long in the future. 

He doesn’t blame Wade for being angry with him. His frustration is aimed inward, at his own innumerable missteps where Wade was concerned. 

Well, mostly it is. Wade really was being unfairly stubborn in refusing to see things his way even a little bit, he _ always was_. He never went so far as to claim he was _ right _ but he also refused to accept it when he was _ wrong_, and nothing Nathan had to say was ever going to be enough for him because he would rather, always, be the victim of something than just find some simple goddamn middle ground here.

He had a right to be angry, but using his anger as a shield to stubbornly block out any chance for Nathan to attempt making things right was… irritating. It was that kind of childish self-indulgence that made Nathan go as far as he had before -- and that had been the wrong move, he understood that well enough now, but it’s been _ years _. He wants a chance to apologize for his behaviour and bring Wade back around.

Frustratingly, he knows Wade well enough to know just how unpredictable the little shit could be. Wade loved his grudges, loved the grandness to the idea of having an identifiable enemy to have to work against. Could be he’d happily latch on to Cable as his present enemy and begin making himself an obstacle in Nathan’s path. Just as easily, he could decide there’s a benefit to being friendly again and drop right back into his aggressive buddy-buddy routine. The only consistency Nathan can see looking at their past interactions is that Wade will probably follow whatever instinct it is that lets him consistently inconvenience as many people involved as possible.

Nathan yearns for the days when Deadpool was a mouthy obnoxious blip occasionally appearing on his radar, a particularly tough kill or rough fight to get past. He misses when the sound of Wade’s voice made his teeth clench against obscenity at the sheer annoyance of having to deal with him. It was simpler, before Wade started to register as a person instead of another opponent. 

Once, having Wade eager to fully cut ties and butt entirely out of his life, the prospect of having found a way to ensure he stopped showing up just to complicate things and mess with Nathan’s business would have been a relief. A source of pride. 

All Nathan wants now is Wade to want to talk to him. Hell, for him to want it just the tiny bit enough to make him amenable to seeing him.

He _ misses _ Wade. He misses the incessant noise and the crudity and the simmering, manic violence. He misses feeling the runoff pouring out of Wade’s frantic, intractable mind, how it felt like a contact high just to be near him for a while.

Years without Wade getting in his way, complicating things, demanding his attention when there were more prudent things to focus on in both long and short term senses; years without Wade should have pleased him. He’s been able to apply so much more focus to his work, to his numerous lofty goals. Missing someone who took _ joy _in spoiling or delaying his plans is so absurd it almost makes Nathan laugh.

Wade, even at the best of their time together, had been a distraction and an irritant. He'd put himself underfoot, demanded attention, baited fights, indulged in flights of irrationality so thorough he later couldn't even justify his own actions. Even when Nathan made time for him, he bit and snarled and demanded more. He fought for the joy of fighting and if he gentled under Nathan's hands then it was more often than not simply to lull him into complacency before sinking his teeth in again later. 

Nathan is more than willing to admit having overstepped in his attempt to bring Wade back to his side, but the blame wasn't all his. He overstepped because Wade stubbornly refused to see reason; he overstepped because Wade so much preferred to be the victim, to be able to blame the whole rest of the world for his loneliness and misery that there hadn't been any other options left but cruelties. Create a horror to force him to turn to the least painful option -- it wasn't _ Nathan's _ fault that Wade refused to communicate like an adult. 

It takes three days of holding on to that particular thorn of vindication before he starts examining the problem again, scrubbing through the last ten minutes or so of the video for what he kept telling himself was the last time. His team has had it long enough that even if he’d somehow missed something worth raising concern over, someone else would have heard or noted it. 

There was nothing of value there. A bit of smut, niche porn neither of the actors knew was being filmed. 

He can’t make himself stop thinking about it. He has the file and he _ knows _ there’s no point in watching it -- there’s nothing to be gained by mooning over the past or mourning what might have been. He’s made his choices and Wade has certainly made his own, and…

And he’d been unfair. 

Watching the way Wade let all his walls down, how relaxed, how trusting of Nathan he is on tape, it’s hard not to admit to himself that Wade was… uniquely placed to view himself as the eternal victim. A great many things happened to him that were unbelievably unfair, and every victory seemed to come to him at great personal cost. Even his healing factor. He was mistrustful of other people, suspicious of motives and rules and the grand plans the people he dealt with put together for good reason. Anyone living his life would be.

So Wade realizing that Nathan wasn’t acting in good faith, that he was in fact trying to manipulate him -- that he had been for the bulk of their friendship, not just the sexual portion but the entirety of it -- was it any wonder that it had blown up fantastically in Nathan’s face? Did he deserve any better, having known exactly what he was doing as he did it, to whom, knowing it had to be done with layers of redundancy so Wade never knew all the things Nathan had his hands in?

All that secrecy, all the behind the scenes care taken to watch Wade without being known to do it, getting to know everything about the man without sitting down and talking to him -- he can justify it all, but does that make it _ right_?

Nathan would never accept someone digging into his life, pulling his strings and playing off his nature to their own ends. Even if that person was doing it in his best interest, it would… it would infuriate him. 

And Wade of course would never see that he’d been trying to look out for him. Nathan might be, positions reversed, able to see that the hurt hadn’t been malicious. He could move past it, allow whoever hurt him to re-earn his trust, maybe. He could, at the very least, come to the terse understanding that he hadn’t been hurt intentionally and learn to at least share space and work with whoever had done that unintentional harm.

With Wade, it was uncertain that he’d be able to see that. That he’d accept any apology. As many times as he’d been hurt, as many times as he’d been burned letting himself trust, it would be a miracle if he ever let Nathan near him again, much less allowed any measure of a return to what they’d had on the tape.

The question becomes less, to Nathan, who was more in the wrong, less about who had the right to be angry and who had acted poorly. They both have plenty of marks in both arenas, though Nathan isn’t certain, if it came down to letting an outsider give an objective tally, the results would be at all flattering for him. It’s not about right and wrong or who did what and why. The question is, how hard is he willing to work to fix the mistakes _ he _ made.

After all, there’s nothing he can do about the things he had no control of. And if he’s honest, it’s questionable whether Wade should be assigned blame for some of the things he’d done. Can you blame a man for following his nature when he’s not clearly been told (or taught) to behave differently? Can you fault a snake for biting if you stick your hand in its face?

How hard is Nathan willing to work to fix this?

_ Why _ does he want to fix it?

Sitting in his room -- a different room than in the video, but set up so similarly and decorated with the same austerity that it hardly made any difference -- Nathan stares at his laptop screen and tries to think that through. He tries to be honest, but the truth is far less flattering than he would like. It’s ugly enough that he wants to flinch from it, the way Wade often acts as if people should flinch from his face. 

For all that Nathan has told himself his actions regarding Wade have always been altruistic, he’s not certain that this was ever really the case. Not intending to be hurtful doesn’t absolve one of having been hurtful -- hurting someone in the name of their best interest didn’t give any more absolution, either. 

And the truth is, Nathan liked seeing Wade upset.

Wade was all id. He wanted what he wanted and he felt what he felt. He didn’t censor himself, often because he didn’t realize until it was too late that he was saying anything that might need censoring. He could be pointedly crude or needling but often he simply forgot to -- or simply couldn’t -- employ a filter between his brain and his mouth. 

And all of that meant that even with the people Wade had positive relationships with, he was often on the outs with someone he’d rather not be. He often upset people he didn’t mean to upset, and he embraced doing so because he was used to having no close, lasting relationships. The ones he did have typically didn’t end well for the other person, an unfortunate truth that had perhaps warped into something of a complex for Wade. He expects the people he lets in to leave, to turn on him, to die.

Nathan’s behaviour certainly couldn’t have helped that at all.

On the tape, Wade is in one of his good moods. Probably annoyed that Nathan had been busy, but annoyed rather than angry, and willing to channel his annoyance into sexual bait rather than sulk or leave. Nathan can’t remember, but he’s fairly certain his business had been genuine that night -- which wasn’t always the case. Sometimes he feigned a heavier workload because he liked it when Wade got frustrated, liked it when he wanted it so bad he grabbed Nathan and dragged him to bed, or shoved his way under the desk and clawed into Nathan’s trousers regardless of what room they were in.

Often, back then, Nathan nudged things, arranged things, set things in motion to challenge Wade. He _ liked _ having Wade on edge, he _ liked _ getting him upset. That rage and that passion at the surface made Wade honest, made him shed the defenses, made him… made him _ vulnerable _ for Nathan.

He liked being the shoulder Wade cried on. He liked that Wade let him see that, see him vulnerable, see him made miserable. Who else was allowed to see under all the masks Wade Wilson wore, to see beyond all those terrible smiles, past the snarling humor and the biting jokes carefully tailored to keep everyone else uncomfortable and distanced.

Being the one Wade opened up to, in even the smallest way, was… had been important. It had made Nathan feel something to see Wade weep, to hear the hitch in his breath, to see the tears. It was inappropriate in the extreme, how badly he wanted to see Wade crumble just so he could catch him. 

Wade didn’t know that Nathan pushed him toward breaking. He wasn’t aware, it wasn’t anything he could consent to. Nathan had toyed with him the way he might have in a sexual scene, but he hadn’t ever _ asked _ . He hadn’t even _ thought _ to ask, because it meant having too many difficult conversations about who Wade was as a person and how he hid himself, how he used humor and violence as protection against letting other people close.

Nathan hadn’t made himself the safety that Wade seemed to find him to be. That hadn’t been done intentionally, or at least, Nathan doesn’t _ think _ he’s enough of a bastard to have been playing this game that far back. No, Wade had _ chosen _ him to be the rock, chosen him to be safe to cry in front of and vulnerable with.

But once Nathan had realized how much he enjoyed _ being _ that for Wade, he’d -- well. If he's kind to himself, he might accept saying that he hadn't engineered that unhappiness intentionally. But he's not completely certain that kindness is deserved, or if it's born out of the self-serving desire not to admit he's a complete asshole.

He liked seeing Wade cry. It _ aroused him _ to be the one Wade willingly cried in front of. 

It’s not just the tears, of course it’s not. It’s all the moments he got to see Wade with all the artifice stripped away, all the fake laughter and all the jokes and all the underlying snarling mean pushed aside and just got to see _ Wade, _ vulnerable and bare and all for Nathan.

The tears, though, the tears are the thing that disturbs him. Engineering Wade’s distress to force his vulnerability around him, that _ troubles _ Nathan more than a little. 

So there are things Nathan needs to apologize for. 

He watches himself on the tape, watches his lips press to the top of Wade’s head and sees himself murmur something too soft for even the clearly sophisticated camera hidden in his wall to have picked up. He remembers having thought Wade would already be too close to sleep to decipher such a quiet mumble. He wonders now if he’d been correct, if he’s the only one in the world now who knows just how deep he’d gotten all those years ago. 

Did Wade hear? 

Did he hear any of the times Nathan had made his near silent confession? Nathan had always hoped not, certain any open verbal declaration of affection would be turned into a joke -- or worse, taken seriously and used to justify Wade pushing away again, the way he pushed when he got frightened of what it could mean to be close to another person. 

Now, Nathan thinks maybe it would have been better to let him hear. To ensure that he knew, at least at the time, how Nathan had felt.

At the time, Nathan had thought the implication was better. It was better to leave it unsaid, to keep things easy, to give them both a sort of plausible deniability. After all, Wade was near obsessive in his need to prove his masculinity, his heterosexuality, his prowess with women. Making some kind of clear confession would only have invited an expedited end to what they’d had.

Cowardice, Nathan thinks now, but there’s a certain sympathy for his past self. After all, he hadn’t exactly been wrong. 

It’s just that, because he never took the chance, because he never grit his teeth and played the risky hand, there was now not a chance in hell that Wade hadn’t already picked apart every open, freely given sign of affection to find the manipulation in it. He’d see every kindness Nathan had given as part of his trying to control him. 

He’d overplayed his hand in all the wrong ways, played the wrong cards too close to his chest, and it had truly come back to bite him now, because finding a way to apologize to Wade that Wade would accept as anything other than Nathan trying to manipulate him further was going to be an excruciating task. 

Honestly, Nathan didn’t even know how to start. There were so many factors to consider, not least being that Wade wouldn’t take kindly to Nathan appearing out of the blue and forcing an interaction. The simplest option was of course to simply _ talk _ about it, like adults, but Wade wasn’t even willing to speak on the phone. This wasn’t anything Nathan wanted to have out over the phone anyway, as comforting as having a few hundred miles between himself and a violent, unhappy Wade might be. 

Wade liked grand gestures. He liked things that were dramatic, cinematic, things that looked impressive and meaningful in fiction but were impractical and cumbersome for everyone involved in practice. He liked the kind of overblown statements that real people simply didn't do in real life, but would look stunning in a movie or sounded appealing in a book. 

He liked the idea of an apology that came with real grovelling, like whoever was apologizing was debasing themselves for it, willing to suffer the humiliation of publicly begging for forgiveness. He also liked the idea of pining, silently suffering after a miscommunication only to, in a fit of drama, be pushed to a public confession. He loves dramatics, is willing to perform them for others despite, as far as Nathan's seen, never really being the recipient of similar effort. 

Nathan knows this about Wade not because he'd seen what Wade accepted as an apology from others, but because he paid attention to Wade's own behaviours. He knew what Wade liked in most any situation, because Wade let him see. Sometimes Wade even told him outright; sometimes he'd inform Nathan very casually of things, actions or foods or ideas that he liked, as though it had simply just occurred to him as something to say. Other times, he'd say what he liked all deliberate and slow, like Nathan was too stupid to understand if Wade didn't use small words, and Wade could hardly believe he had to say the words out loud. 

Learning what Wade liked and wanted and preferred had always been, like so many things with Wade, incredibly frustrating and deeply bizarre. And fun, and funny, and impossibly enjoyable for all the annoyance and violence that generally came with time spent with the man. It had eaten at Nathan, back then, how close the two of them were, physically and emotionally, and yet Wade managed to still always be closed to him in so many ways. 

There were parts of Wade that Nathan would have never known about, if Wade hadn't decided to tell him.

With most people, Nathan can figure out motivations and desires, as well as the reactions they'll have to just about any action he could make, and he could figure them out on limited interaction. Most people had a thousand unconscious tells they didn't know about, and however complicated their needs or wants might be, figuring them out wasn't particularly difficult, even without his powers. 

Perhaps that was why he'd fucked up so spectacularly where Wade was concerned. With everyone else, Nathan could cheat, read them to figure out exactly the right way to play them. He knew how to make them happy, or get what he needed from them, or at the very least keep from hurting them. Even when he couldn't read their minds, he could figure out how to make the right call. 

He'd never really managed that trick with Wade. He'd tried, he'd even thought for a while that he'd actually done quite well. But if he was honest, for all the time they spent together and for all Wade's insistence that they were the best of friends, all Nathan could ever do was hope for the best.

It was always a guess with Wade. Always a gamble.

Nathan was beginning to think that perhaps he was less talented at gambling than he'd always thought.

The issue becomes, the more he thinks about what kinds of cinematic apologetic gestures he could make that would at the very least amuse Wade, that anything he does is likely to be interpreted as a furthered attempt to manipulate. Wade loved grand gestures, for a certainty, but what he loved best was a grudge. He tended to his grudges like a gardener with delicate plants, right up to the point where he got the fruit of it, which was usually some cathartic act of violence. 

Was that the right move? Would it make Wade happier, ultimately, to bait him into a fight and have it out?

Nathan doesn't want to fight Wade, and he certainly doesn't want to hurt him. If he's honest, he's probably done enough of both, and will do more even if he _ does _manage to win Wade back to his side. He's good at nudging people (or brute forcing them) into the places he needs or wants them, but he's never been good at long-term relationships. He never expects anything to last.

If anything he does is going to be taken as an attempt to manipulate Wade, then maybe it doesn't matter what he ends up doing. Maybe he's thinking too hard, trying to pick it all apart into too many nuanced 'what-if' scenarios. 

He lost the chance to tell Wade how he'd felt before, when he'd had Wade's trust. He'd overthought it then, over processed and decided for Wade that he wouldn't believe or accept the notion if it was stated openly. Over thinking an attempt to apologize would do nothing but completely spoil any chance of ever winning that trust back to any degree.

Better to act and make his mistakes, learn from them while chasing this. Otherwise, he might as well give it up and do nothing at all.

He knows damn well what most people would tell him to do, given that it's Wade he's worried about winning back to his side. Hell, even Wade himself probably would tell him to give it up, and that's part of why Nathan think's he's so stubborn where Wade's concerned. Even Wade wanted to give up on Wade.

So, he wouldn't. He refused. Maybe that stubbornness was somehow self-serving — he wouldn’t be surprised to hear someone tell him as much, and certainly Wade would at least think it, but he was firm on it. Wade deserved to have someone in his corner, and Nathan may have failed in many ways to be that person, but he found he wasn’t ready to stop yet.

It occurs to him as he begins picking out the flowers and arranging them in a careful display that Wade likely has no clue that flowers have meanings, or if he’s aware of the concept that he probably wouldn’t ever have bothered to memorize them. He fills the arrangement with purple hyacinths and lavender, studded with gardenias and white chrysanthemums. Forgive me, it’s meant to say; forgive me, I love you. 

He’s honest with himself about the likelihood of it being accepted. He knows it won’t fix things, it won’t smooth anything — it very likely will make things worse before it helps anything get better. The hurt Wade’s nursed over this, the grudge he’s built, cannot be assuaged with a single floral arrangement, and Wade is more likely to hurl the vase at a wall or someone’s face as he is to accept it even grudgingly. 

But it’s an in. It’s an attempt. It’s a peace offering that Wade can chew on, it shows willingness. Wade can overthink as much as he likes, he’s as good at that as Nathan himself, but he can’t ignore the fact that Nathan is trying. And Nathan is willing to _ keep _ trying.

He sends the arrangement through a reliable courier and tries to focus on more pertinent things. After all, he’d started out calling Wade simply because the release of the video into public hands had caused a good deal of trouble that needed to be addressed. There wasn’t enough time to justify how much of it he’s wasted mooning over his personal relationships, and he knows that. 

It would be selfish to continue actively fussing over it, and counterproductive to waste the resources to monitor how Wade responds to the delivery, so he forces himself to do neither. Wade will either respond, or he won’t. There’s no point in wondering what he will or won’t do, because Wade always manages to surprise Nathan anyway.

What will be, will be. 

That doesn’t mean there’s no sting to a delivery confirmation email with no follow up two days later. It certainly doesn’t mean that he actually stops thinking about it. 

The courier hadn’t sent word of any issue. No demands for compensation for the delivery person being threatened, no mention of any kind of hiccup in its receipt at destination. Had Wade simply accepted the flowers and thrown them away? Had he not realized who had sent them, or had he just finally decided that the messenger wasn’t ‘good enough’ to take his ire out on? 

Wade had always been reactive. If something annoyed him, everyone knew. If he was mad, he made sure to let Nathan know exactly why and how much. Radio silence had never been part of it, before, and as obnoxious as he’d always claimed it to be, never having a moment’s peace with Wade there to chatter endlessly in his ear, this silence felt like more of a punishment than any physical attack Wade had ever attempted. It hurt.

Life goes on. The flowers never get a response and less than a week after he gets confirmation that they’ve been delivered, he’s slated to appear for an interview in New York with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes. The interview is supposedly meant to be focused on the continually increasing applications for citizenship on Providence despite the near loss of the island in multiple attacks since its creation, but given that no interview had been requested until the now-infamous Providence Sex Tape had been made public, Nathan’s not stupid enough to expect the subject to focus on less titilating matters.

He tries not to think about Wade, living his life from a rat-hole of an apartment in the city, just a short trip away from where he’s sitting, waiting for a team to show up to do the insisted-upon make up before the interview starts. Wade is an adult, and Nathan is going to figure out some way of apologizing to him, but showing up at his apartment uninvited is foolish. With a man as impulsive and violent as Wade is, showing up unexpectedly would feel like an attack whether it was intended to or not, and Wade would lash out. It would only make things worse.

It’s hard not to wonder though, still stung from the foolish sliver of burnt hope he’d held out that the flowers would be enough to encourage at least a little interest from Wade. Wonder if Wade’s still hiding out in his apartment, like he had been last Nathan had heard, casual recon before deciding to try calling him. Irene hadn’t been happy about him asking for tabs to be put on Wade, and Nathan knew that well enough, however much she thought she hid it. He’d assumed it was because Irene simply didn’t like Wade.

Now he wonders if it wasn’t perhaps her anticipating exactly this. Wade had a way — has a way — of making Nathan distracted, absorbing his focus even when he’s not physically present. Presently Nathan has important, world altering matters he should be focused on, and he’s still mooning over Wade. Over the ways he’d hurt Wade, over how he’d done wrong by him and the ways he should have tried to fix it sooner. 

Unseemly, Irene would think. Or maybe, for once, she’d be on Wade’s side. As much as possible, Nathan tries to give people their privacy, especially the people who work for and with him. As much as he knows Irene didn’t like Wade, she was an emotionally intelligent woman, more in touch with this time period’s sensibilities than Nathan could ever be. As much as Wade had enjoyed getting a rise out of her and as much as she’d relished every single time Nathan had sided with her over Wade’s pranks and shenanigans, that had been one thing they readily agreed on: however much they liked Nathan, he was too distant, too willing to hurt people’s feelings if it meant maximizing the outcome he wanted. 

He thinks about grand gestures, things Wade might accept if shown or offered, a sweeping action impossible to ignore that Wade couldn’t turn from or pretend was meaningless. 

Wade doesn’t watch the news, not unless he was going to be on it or something big enough was happening. But he had friends with more sensible tastes in television consumption. And there was a chance that Nathan’s interview here today would go viral tonight after it was aired. The sex tape had dragged him back into center stage, everyone wanted a soundbite, everyone wanted an official statement. So far, he’d offered little, obediently repeated Irene’s key phrase, “no comment”, and either walked away or steered the conversation back to whatever pretense had started it. 

He thought that was for the best, imagined that it was what _ Wade _ would prefer, if he were still speaking to him. After all, it had only been for Wade’s comfort that he’d ever made any attempt to keep their relationship discreet. Now, there was no hiding it — the whole world had gotten a peek into their bedroom now, and no one was ever going to believe that video was editing magic or look-alikes. 

If Wade was going to attempt to make some claim in that vein, wouldn’t he have done it by now? Wade didn’t sit long on ideas he thought were good; he jumped on them, went to the loudest and most vibrant extreme with most of them, made them impossible to miss.

Wade hadn’t made any statement. If he had, Nathan would have heard it by now, would have seen the video or read the text interview. As far as Nathan was aware, Wade had holed up in his apartment some hours after the video went live and hadn’t emerged since. Perhaps by now he had; Nathan didn’t keep constant tabs on him anymore, only checked in once in a great while from a distance, out of habit. 

Making no statement is far from the same thing as agreeing to publicly being outed… but the damage was done. Would it hurt Wade more to see Nathan turn the question aside as if it were unimportant, or to hear Nathan’s true opinion on what they’d had, what they’d lost? It would do no favours for Nathan’s reputation to say what he had to say — on _ film_, no less, _ willingly on the record _. It wouldn’t do much for Wade’s reputation either, though, and while he wasn’t struggling to secure jobs the way he had for a while, they still weren’t as frequent as Nathan knew he’d like them to be.

It was a gamble. It was always a gamble, and there was no option to not roll the dice. Anything he did tonight, including walking out and refusing to do the interview, made a statement. Every option would become a _ gesture_. 

That’s the thought that makes up his mind, shocking a shaking little laugh out of him, the noise sudden enough that the woman busily fixing his hair just so jumped where she stood, inhaling a little gasp before smiling at him uncertainly.

He has no idea how to even imagine the odds on what he’s about to do. Wade could take it any number of ways, including completely ignoring it. Nathan doubted that Wade had fully moved on any more than he himself had, but he might have lied to himself that he had. They both had that habit, telling themselves something was over and then finding themselves right back in it. 

Wade would _ care _ about this, and it might make it worse. It might make Wade furious, might get him showing up with violence on his mind. But at least he’d be showing up. He’d come _ back_, or he’d let Nathan come to him, they could _ talk_. That’s all Nathan wants now, to just talk. 

In person, without the opportunity for Wade to hang up on him when he got uncomfortable. 

In person, where he could see where the hurt was worse, hear it when Wade’s emotions got the best of him. Where he could reach out and comfort, or hold Wade in place, keep him from bolting or attacking. 

Nathan’s not great at this sort of gambling, he’s figured that out well enough. He can take risks and make hard choices in a fight, and he can steer the river of politics that dictates the course of the future. Asked to blindly guess the option least likely to hurt someone important to him and suddenly risk seemed an ugly thing to take. 

“Mr. Summers, it’s great to have the opportunity to sit with you again,” the reporter says, leaning forward in his chair to offer a hand to Nathan, shaking it warmly. “There’s a lot to talk about this time, wouldn’t you say?”

Looking away from the camera, Nathan smiles warmly. He’s always been good in front of a crowd or camera, it’s easy to him. “I’m sure you have a few new questions for me. What do you want to know?”


End file.
